Saturday, 12 March 2016

Darebee Visual Workouts - 2 Weeks Later

I've been using Darebee's visual workouts for two weeks now, and I have to say that I love them. They're so tough, much tougher than I expected, but in fairness, as with any workout, it's the intensity you work at that really makes your results. I worked at level 2 and level 3 - 5 to 7 sets - with about 30 seconds rest between sets, for which I'm very proud, and I really, really felt it. Especially the next day. Following The Witcher and Super Saiyan in particular, everything from the ribs up ached, right the way around. It was awful, and awesome.

It has been so refreshing having a new workout every day; I usually use DVDs which gives me one or two workouts to alternate between, and while that means I can get just comfortable enough with them to do them well before hitting a plateau, it can get a bit repetative, especially with hard workouts. The Witcher and Super Saiyan have turned out to be the hardest (these are the two I do 5 sets of, not 7), but I put my all into both because they're different enough from one another while both still being tough that I can, and because I know I don't have to do either of them again until the next week.

My favourite has been Korra; it's tough and high cardio, and yet I can manage level 3 before dying. Mulan is quite good, too - straight forward but, with intensity and focus, makes for an amazing sweat.

The past two weeks have been tough but great fun, at last, and I'm keen to keep going. I've also tried to change my outlook on my workouts in the hope of boosting my motivation and turning my mind away from the mirror. I used to exercise with the goal of burning fat, and it's led to me overworking and under-eating, which has resulted in some pretty bad moods. I read a long and revealing post on Blogilates a little while ago, and along with its main content making me think, so did what she said at the end about re-evaluating why we exercise. My passion for fitness was very unexpected, and while I really do want to burn fat and get my dream body, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy pushing myself and seeing my abilities increase. I'm not a cardio bunny, I absolutely adore resistance training, be it with weights, kettlebells or body weight because I find it more of a challenge, so instead of turning my mind towards distant results (because burning fat takes time, and that actually makes it a little easier to slack in workouts because what's an extra day?), I've been looking at improving my skill, and that happens with every single rep. It's much, much more immediate and not only does that focus my mind on what I'm doing, not allowing me to slack, it also forces me to meet my barriers and then exceed them. Rather than staying at the edge of my comfort zone, I'm leaving it.

My mood has improved because of this, and I'm eating a little more and not shying away from carbs because, now, I'm eating to fuel the workouts rather than under-eating to lose weight. Yes, this might slow the process, but if I'm not looking so closely for the results, I'm hoping I'll actually notice them.

I think the start of this month, with this new workout set-up, has been a really great time to put my new outlook into action. Rather than following DVDs - reps, sets, time and so on - I'm doing it on my own, and that gives me the option to bottle out at level 2, or push myself to level 3 as best I can, and believe me when I say I'm pushing myself. This has been an amazing 2 weeks, and I will quite happily keep using these workouts, give them what I would have spent on a high-end DVD, and I am very, very likely to come back and do it again with the other workouts I picked out but didn't make it into this month's 6.

It's so much more fun with the visualisation, with appropriate soundtracks in the background, and that helps, too. Seeg says I'm a massive nerd, but we've been together for 6 years. He was already well-aware of this, and I daresay my readers are, too.

I'll report back in 3 weeks as I decided before I started that I would grace this with five weeks instead of the usual four, and I'm really pleased about that decision. I'm nowhere near ready to stop.

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